According to diplomats UN inspectors may say in an upcoming report that a Syrian Desert site bombed to rubble in 2007 was probably a covert nuclear reactor, opening the way for the UN Security Council to take up the case. The Vienna-based diplomats said that there are indications nuclear activity may have taken place at the Dair Alzour site, but the next reports could use more pointed wording. The IAEA has declined to comment bout the report, which will be presented to its 35-nation governing board in June.

The board possesses the power to refer to countries to the Security Council if they are judged to have broken IAEA rules based on the global Non-Proliferation Treaty that ban diversions of nuclear technology to weapons development. Diploamts said that it was not clear whether a Security Council referral would come at the June board meeting in Vienna and that it could take much lnger for possible action.

Syria has long denied the IAEA follow-up access to the site that US intelligence reports say was a nascent designed by North Korea and meant to yield bomb fuel. In September 2007 Israel planes wrecked the site and Syria has allowed IAEA investigators to visit it only once, in June 2008, stonewalling all further requests for access. Syria, a close ally of Iran, denies ever having a nuclear weapons program.

In 2006 the board referred Iran to the Security Council over its failure to clarify suspicions of illicit nuclear weaponisation work. Iran has denied seeking atom bombs but has refused to curb uranium enrichment and has been hit with an escalating series of Security Council sanctions. One diplomat accredited to the IAEA said that there is a discussion in the agency about whether to make a final evaluation on Syria about what it constructed at Dair Alzour.

The diplomat added that if there is an assessment, it is possible the IAEA will say bin the report there is a “high degree of confidence” the site was a nuclear reactor, or something similar.

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